Tharon of Lost Valley Part 21

Her fresh face, its cheeks whipped pink under their tan by the winds, its blue eyes sparkling, its wet red lips parted over the white teeth, hurt him with a downright pain.

"Oh, Tharon," he said with an accent that was all-revealing, "Oh, Tharon, dear!"

The girl scrambled to her feet and looked at him in surprise.

"Billy," she said sharply, "what's th' matter with you? Are you sick?"

"Yes," said the boy with conviction, "I am. Let's go home."

"Sick, how?" she pressed, with the born tyranny of the loving woman, "have you got that pain in your stomach again?"

Billy laughed in spite of himself, and the romantic ache was shattered.

"For the love of Pete!" he complained, "don't you ever forget that?

You know I've never et an ounce of Anita's puddin's since. No, I think," he finished judiciously as he mounted Golden, "that I've caught somethin', Tharon--caught somethin' from that feller of th'

red-beet badge. Leastways I've felt it ever sence I left th'

clearin'."

And as they swung away from the spring toward the Holding, far ahead under its cottonwoods, he let out the young horse for another stretch.

"Bet Golden can beat El Rey up home," he said over his shoulder.

"Beat th' king?" cried Tharon aghast, "you're foolin', Billy, an' I don't want to run nohow. I've run enough this day."

So the rider held up again and together they paced slowly up through the gathering twilight where long blue shadows were reaching out to touch them from the western Wall and the golden shafts were turning to crimson, were lifting as the sun sank, were travelling up and up along the eastern mountains toward the pale skies. Soon they rode in purple dusk while the whole upper world was bathed in crimson and lavender light and Lost Valley lay deep in the earth's heart, a sinister spot, secret and dark.

"Sometimes, Billy," said Tharon softly, "I like to ride like this, in th' big shadows--an' then I like to have some one with me that I know, some one like you, some one who will understand when I don't talk, an'

who is always there beside me. It's a wonderful feelin'--but somehow, it's soft, too--mebby too soft--like--like--like a woman who's just a woman."

The boy swallowed once, miserably.

"Always, Tharon," he said huskily, "always--when you want me--or need me--I'll be there, beside you. An' you don't need to even speak a word to me. I'm like th' dogs--there whether you call or not."

"I know," said the girl, and reaching over she caught the rider's hand, brown beneath its vanity of studded leather cuff, and gave it a little tender pressure.

Billy set his teeth to keep from crus.h.i.+ng her fingers, and together they rode slowly up along the sounding slopes to the beautiful security and comfort of Last's Holding.

CHAPTER VII

THE SHOT IN THE CAnONS

Kenset of the foothills was very busy. Between study of his maps and the endless riding of their claimed areas he was out from dawn till dark.

He found, indeed, that none but he, of late years, had ridden those sloping forest covered skirts. Some one, sometime, must have done so, else the maps themselves would not have been, but what marks they must have left were either gone through the erosion of the elements or been wantonly destroyed.

He fancied the former had been the case, for he saw no signs of destruction, and the very curiosity of the denizens of the Valley precluded familiarity with forest work.

So he laid out for himself the labour of a dozen men and went at it with a vim that kept him at high tension. Therefore he had little time to think of Tharon Last and the strange life in Lost Valley. Only when he rode between given points, unintent on the land around, did he give up to his speculations. At such times his mind invariably went back to that first day at Baston's steps and he saw her again as he had seen her then, tense, stooping, her elbows bent above the guns at her hips, coming backward along the porch, feeling for the steps with her foot.

Always he saw the ashen whiteness of her cheeks beneath her blowing hair.

Always he frowned at the memory and always he felt a thrill go down his nerves. What was she, anyway, this wild, sweet creature of the wilderness who held herself aloof from his friends.h.i.+p, and said that she was "sworn?"

Kenset, sane, quiet, peace loving, shook himself mentally and tried not to think of her. But day after day he came down along the edges of the scattered woods where the cattle grazed--on the forest lands--and looked over to where the Holding lay like a greener spot on the green stretches.

He thought of her, living in this feudal hold, mistress of her riders, her cattle, and her wonderful racing horses of the Finger Marks, sweet, fair, wholesome--with the six-guns at her slender hips!

If only he, Kenset, could take those weapons from her clinging hands, could wipe out of her young heart the calm intent to kill!

It was preposterous! It was awful!

Bred to another life, another law, another type of woman, he could not reconcile this girl of Lost Valley with anything he knew.

He went over in his mind again and again the serene calmness of her in his cabin that day of the race with Courtrey, and shook his head in puzzlement.

But why should he trouble himself about her at all?

He had come here in his Government's service to reclaim its forest, to look after its interest.

Why should he bother with the moral code of Lost Valley?

But reason as he might, the face of Tharon Last came back to haunt him, waking or asleep.

He knew that it troubled him and was, in a way, ashamed. So he worked hard at his tasks, relocated boundaries, marked them with a peculiar blaze in convenient trees which looked something like this:

and set up monuments with odd and undecipherable hieroglyphics upon them.

And with each blaze, each mark and monument and sign, he drew closer in about him the net of suspicion and disapproval which was weaving in Lost Valley, for there was not one but ran the gamut of close inspection and speculation by Courtrey's men, by the settlers who came many miles over from the western side of the Valley for the purpose, and by Tharon's riders.

Low mutters of disapproval growled in the Valley.

Who was this upstart, anyway, to come setting signs and marks in the land that had been theirs from time immemorial? What mattered the little copper-coloured badge on his breast? What mattered it that he was beginning to send out word of his desire to work with and for the cattlemen of Lost Valley, the settlers, the homesteaders?

What was this matter of "grazing permits" of which he had spoken at the Stronghold?

Permits?

They had grazed their cattle where and when they chose--and could--from their earliest memory.

They asked no leave from Government.

When Kenset rode into Corvan he was treated with exaggerated politeness by those with whom he had to deal, with utter unconsciousness by all the rest. To cattleman and settler alike he was as if he had not been.

None spoke to him in the few broad streets, none asked him to a bar to drink.